


When I'm alone I'd rather be with you

by sparrowsmateforlife



Series: Till 3005 [1]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: M/M, happy end for trobed, rachel has a really ugly green coat, troy is jealous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25165705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowsmateforlife/pseuds/sparrowsmateforlife
Summary: Troy comes home, but he’s not sure that means what he thought it would mean.And Abed doesn’t meet Troy’s eye, and Rachel walks into Abed’s room in front of Abed, and Troy can’t read Abed’s expression at all, and he wishes he didn’t have to see the pity on Annie’s face.The couch is really comfortable, much more than a tiny cot on a tiny, rocking sail boat, but somehow Troy wishes he was still on the Mediterranean – somewhere at a time when he could still pretend that he was as important to Abed as Abed was to him.
Relationships: Abed Nadir/Rachel (Community), Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: Till 3005 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823098
Comments: 7
Kudos: 114





	When I'm alone I'd rather be with you

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one breathless sitting so like. idk guys.

**Ocean Vuong – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous**

**Childish Gambino – 3005**

Coming home goes like this: one moment Troy still likes the sea and sailing and calling Levar by his first name. He enjoys only staying in one place long enough to try some new food, talk to some new people, then leave and not really feel any need to cry like he did the first time he left somewhere.

It’s fun to go to a new gay bar each time, to know that he can kiss someone there and not have it mean anything, no dancing around the flint-thin barrier between best friends and something more – just straightforward kissing and no actual feelings and leaving a couple of hours later.

That’s how Troy felt, still, walking through the Amsterdam streets on the way to another club he’d been recommended by the guy he kissed in Brussels, when he caught a glimpse of someone in the corner of his eye – tall and dark-haired and wearing a hoodie and just like that, Troy’s entire body seemingly clenched. When he had a difficult day, he sometimes thought he had somehow ended up in the darkest timeline – alone, floating around in the middle of the ocean, without any of the people he loved. For a second, though, he thought this could be the very best timeline – then felt deflated when the person turned around and was decidedly not who Troy wanted to see.

The next day he tells Levar he needs to go home.

***

Troy hadn’t expected Rachel.

It’s not that Abed hadn’t mentioned her. The two of them still texted frequently and Abed did mention her occasionally (which was still more than Troy would have liked – he chalked up his feelings towards her to the fact that she got to watch the shows with Abed that Troy wanted to watch with Abed), but he only ever really referred to her as ‘Rachel’, never as his girlfriend, and never as someone who he hangs out with all that often.

Which is why Troy doesn’t understand why she is at his welcome-home-Troy party, acting like she knows him very well (and, more annoyingly, that she knows Abed very well). And he also doesn’t understand why she is always right there when Troy is talking to Abed, making their conversations feel a bit stilted, and by the end of the evening they still haven’t done their handshake, and Troy fully blames Rachel.

Speaking about the end of the evening – she just won’t leave.

Shirley left early, wanting to see her kids before they went to bed. The dean and Jeff left next – Troy didn’t quite understand what was going on there. Before he could ask Abed about it, though, Britta had grabbed onto him and informed him, drunkenly, that their period of dating had been a mistake but that she was glad he was back nonetheless. She’d then started to look a bit green in the face and pretty much run out of the front door.

And so the only people left in the apartment besides Troy are Annie and Abed (who live there!) and _Rachel_. Troy knows he is acting a bit childish, standing in the kitchen with his beer, frowning as he hears the three of them laugh in the living room, but. But.

But _Troy_ is supposed to be the one to make Abed laugh, and so far, he hadn’t managed it yet. Not when he rang the bell and Annie opened it, jumping with how excited she was to hug him and Abed was standing a little behind her, face for once actually blank (not the way other people think Abed’s face is blank – it almost never is, Troy knows, you just have to learn how to read him). Abed hadn’t smiled when Troy greeted him and when Troy had started to say something, Rachel had appeared from behind Abed, and the words had dried up in his mouth.

Abed hadn’t laughed at Troy’s sailing stories like everyone else – although the blank expression had thankfully disappeared, and Troy could swear he saw an eyebrow movement that indicated amusement multiple times. That had encouraged him to put an even more lighthearted twist on the captured-by-pirates story than usual, desperate to get an actual laugh, but at that Abed had actually stood up to get a drink, and Troy found it hard to swallow.

Rachel, on the other hand, had made Abed laugh twice. Troy didn’t even know why – refused to pay too close attention to her – but as much as he loved the sound of Abed laughing, it somehow left him feeling like he was in Amsterdam again, staring at a stranger that was supposed to be his best friend.

And so the only people left in the apartment are Troy, Annie, Abed, and Rachel, and suddenly they’re all entering the kitchen, and Annie is saying that Abed now sleeps in what used to be Troy’s room (which he hadn’t actually wanted in the first place), but that she would make up the couch for Troy and they’d figure something out in the morning.

And Abed doesn’t meet Troy’s eye, and Rachel walks into Abed’s room in front of Abed, and Troy can’t read his expression at all, and he wishes he didn’t have to see the pity on Annie’s face.

The couch is really comfortable, much more than a tiny cot on a tiny, rocking sailboat, but somehow Troy wishes he was still on the Mediterranean – somewhere at a time when he could still pretend that he was as important to Abed as Abed was to him.

***

The next morning, Rachel is _still there_.

The door to his – no, Abed’s – room is closed, but her shoes are still at the front door and her coat is still draped over a chair. Troy represses the urge to go listen at the door.

He doesn’t get it – except he does, of course. Clearly, Rachel is Abed’s girlfriend, and since Abed is a nice guy he wouldn’t kick out his girlfriend in the morning. What Troy doesn’t get is what Abed sees in her. She’s okay looking, sure, and apparently likes TV a lot too. Whatever. It’s not like those are qualities that are hard to come by.

It’s not that Troy’s jealous (he totally is), it’s just that he wanted to reconnect with his best friend and she is getting in the way of that. And her jacket is a garishly bright green color and it annoys him that she just draped it over a chair like that, as if she comes here all the time and keeps a toothbrush next to Abed’s and sleeps in his bed.

Troy is trying so hard to not let the ugly jealous feeling in his chest spread to the rest of his body that he doesn’t notice Annie until she asks him if he would like some cereal.

“Sure”, he says, sitting down at the counter with a sigh.

Annie eyes him carefully. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine”, Troy answers, staring at his hands. He doesn’t feel fine, he feels like a worm is eating his insides bite by painful bite.

Annie takes a moment to pour some milk into the cereal before hesitantly speaking up again.

“It’s just you seem a bit down. And you seemed a bit down yesterday as well.”

Troy takes a deep breath and is fully ready to deny everything when Abed’s door opens and Rachel comes out. She says a cheerful good morning, which Annie returns and Troy gives a grunt to which could either mean ‘good morning’ or ‘I want you to leave’, he’s not quite sure himself.

She says she has to work, and so she has to go, but she’ll be back later, and Troy manages a ‘bye’ when she walks out the door, which he thinks is very polite of him.

Then, Abed walks into the living room, and he takes Troy’s breath away.

See, Troy knows that Abed is beautiful. He has known that, objectively, ever since Abed asked him to join the study group and Troy decided he might as well try to make some friends (and pass Spanish). It’s just that Abed has great facial features. His dark hair is somehow always shiny and his eyes are this deep, dark brown color. He is gangly in an adorable way that suits him.

That knowledge had solidified when Troy realized he was in love with Abed – the day after the Halloween they all forgot in their second year, when he looked at his best friend and somehow, suddenly, thought ‘I love you’ along with ‘you’re gorgeous’.

(At the time, those realizations came together with the prerogative that he never, ever tell Abed, lest their friendship suffered. He didn’t mind just being Abed’s friend – being Abed’s friend was awesome in a way nothing had ever been awesome before, not being a kid and biking off a hill really fast, not playing football for the first time, not being prom king, not finally getting out and choosing his own path. Nothing compared to being Abed’s best friend, to having and so Troy decided that being his best friend was more than enough.)

And Troy had thought about Abed and how beautiful he was every day since he left. Because yes, he left to become his own person, and yes, he had hoped that by leaving the desperate, helpless feeling he had started to experience around Abed would mellow out a bit, but he had never expected to fall out of love. Loving Abed had become part of him, and so Troy didn’t fight the many thoughts about Abed that popped into his head every day.

Still, facetime didn’t compare, especially not when attempted to use in the middle of the ocean, and Troy only now realized how much he had forgotten. It hits him like a train, that Abed has also aged a few years and that his hair has grown, that he’s grown into his gangly body more and yet, he is still so very familiar that Troy wants to cry, because everything is the same but everything is different, and he doesn’t even know if Abed is happy Troy is home.

Then Abed says, “Mornin’”, and while taking a seat, “I’m glad you’re back, Troy. The group dynamic was all off without you, it really affected the viewer ratings.”

Troy is pretty sure he spots a small smile on Abed’s face, and he kind of feels like he’s floating.

***

They watch Inspector Spacetime, and it’s awesome, especially when Abed suggests they build a new blanket fort to sort out Troy’s living situation, and Annie helps, and for a few hours Troy feels like they will be okay, he and Abed will be best friends again and he forgets Rachel exists.

Then Rachel comes back, and something in Abed’s face and mood changes, and he leaves the blanket fort to sit on the couch next to her.

They still watch a whole bunch of tv for the rest of the day, but Rachel seems to think that Abed’s running commentary is directed entirely at her, and Troy notices himself growing increasingly quiet, eyes zeroed in on the way Abed and Rachel are holding hands, which makes him feel terribly lonely.

It angers him, a bit, how he left to become his own person, and he _did_ , and now he’s back and he’s right where he started: hanging onto Abed’s every word, as in love as he ever was, except now Abed has someone else who seems to understand him as well as Troy used to, and so it’s actually worse than it was before.

The problem is this: being away from Abed for two years taught Troy that he can live and be a person without him, it’s just he doesn’t _want_ to. No matter where he was, Troy kept turning his head to tell Abed something, kept wanting to talk to him more than anyone else.

Although they never talked about it, they texted constantly and so Troy assumed Abed felt the same way about him – except now he has to accept that in fact, Abed had kept a huge part of his life from Troy, hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him he’d fallen in love with Rachel, and maybe that hurts even more than the fact that _they still haven’t done their handshake yet._

Rachel sleeps over again, and although Troy keeps reminding himself that Abed helped him build the blanket fort, he doesn’t know if he can stay in this apartment if it’s going to always hurt this much.

***

The next morning finds Troy at the counter again, Annie pouring him cereal, Abed’s door closed, Rachel’s shoes and coat where they were before.

“I think I’ll start looking for a place today, I have the money”, Troy mutters, gaging Annie’s reaction.

She doesn’t look very surprised, just sad, and nods.

“You know, when you left, I figured he would really suffer. We were all prepared for a serious intervention. But it’s like he slipped on a mask of someone that was fine, and the breakdown never came. I was still worried; he never smiled the way he would smile when you were around anymore, so I kept an eye out, and he would look sad when he thought no one was paying attention. And then Rachel came in his life again, and the mask seemed to lift a bit.”

Troy grinds his teeth, annoyed. Annie lays a hand on his, smiling kindly.

“She’s really nice, Troy, I think if you gave her an honest chance, you’d like her. I can imagine it’s hard to not have all of his attention anymore, I get that, but they seem really happy together.”

Troy knows that if he opened his mouth now, everything would come spilling out, and it would be ugly, so he takes another bite of cereal and presses his lips together.

Annie looks concerned and squeezes his hand. “I’m sure that you’ll get used to living here again, Troy. I know it’s crowded with so many people but maybe we could look for a new place together? We could get three rooms, one for me, one for you and one for Abed and –”

“Rachel?” Troy explodes. “Why is she here, _all the time_ , Annie? I don’t even know her and she’s at my welcome-back-Troy party! What was she doing there?” Troy throws his hands up, spilling milk and really getting going now, ignoring Annie’s shaking head. “Why are her shoes always at the door when we keep the shoes in the kitchen? And why is her ugly green coat on the chair when we have a coat rack _right. there_?”

Annie’s eyes widen. “Troy –”

“No, Annie, I’m glad they seem happy but TV is our thing, okay, mine and Abed’s, and when he monologues, he’s talking to _me_ , but she seems to think he’s talking to her? As if she understands even half of what he’s saying? Doesn’t she have her own apartment to watch tv in? Why is she always sleeping _here_?”

Annie widens her eyes even more, seemingly on purpose, whispering, “Troy, they –”

Troy shakes his head angrily. “This is not about me being in love with him, Annie! I get Abed more than anyone else, you know that! And here she is, acting like she knows him, when she doesn’t, not like I –”

Troy is interrupted by a cough, and as he turns he realizes that shouting in a small apartment was probably not smart, and that Annie had tried to tell him twice now, with those eyes, that they had an audience.

Rachel is standing in Abed’s doorway, shaking a bit and looking very pissed off, Abed behind her, his expression blank again.

“I guess me and my ugly coat aren’t wanted here”, she says, grabbing said coat and heading for the door.

A small, petty part of Troy wants to answer that no, she isn’t, but he locks that part of him deep inside and instead looks at Abed instead, desperate to see any twitch on his face that might tell Troy how he is feeling about all this.

“One character overhearing another character saying something really mean about them, then storming off. Classic sitcom trope!” Abed says, before hurrying out the door behind Rachel, and maybe, Troy thinks, this really is the darkest timeline after all.

***

It’s only after the door slams behind Abed, and Annie buries her face in her hands, and Troy lets out a squeaking noise he’s sure he’s never made before, that Troy realizes Abed was wearing a hoodie Troy could have sworn he had packed, but could never find in his luggage.

Somehow, that makes everything worse.

***

Troy should be looking for a new place to stay. At the very least, he should call Jeff and ask him if he can crash at his for a couple of days.

Instead, he’s lying in the blanket fort, staring at its ceiling. Annie had told him an hour earlier that she had promised Shirley to babysit, but should she cancel? He’d said no, that he was fine, and though he knew she didn’t believe him, she’d left him to his moping.

Troy just can’t believe he’d been so stupid. He knows none of his issues were actually Rachel’s fault, so while he does think she’s annoying, he feels bad for hurting her feelings anyway.

Worse – what if Abed is angry at him?

Worst – what if Abed heard Troy offhandedly comment that he’s in love with Abed?

Troy wishes he had never gone to Amsterdam, had never seen that stranger that looked so much like Abed, had never quit football and gone to Greendale. More than anything, he wishes he would have met Abed in a different timeline, one where Troy was better from the start and didn’t need a stupid sailing trip to make him realize who he was and so he wouldn’t ever leave, and Abed would never meet Rachel, and they would sleep in bunk beds till they were 80 and their backs didn’t allow it anymore, when they would start sharing a bed, or something.

As Troy is overthinking how likely it was that alternative universe 80-year old Troy and Abed would kiss in their double bed, the door to the apartment opens. Troy only hears one pair of footsteps, though, and assumes Annie came back early, until the entrance to the blanket fort opens and Abed’s head pops through.

Troy scrambles into a sitting position to let Abed enter as well. Abed’s face is reserved but not blank as it was before; more like he’s holding back than like he’s wearing a mask. He's still wearing Troy's hoodie.

Embarrassed, Troy looks at his hands; he isn’t sure whether he should apologize immediately or wait for Abed to say something. Abed crosses his legs and folds his hands. Troy stays quiet.

“You said you’re in love with me.”

It feels like all breath leaves Troy’s body. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Rachel says I’m also in love with you and so she broke up with me.”

There’s no more breath in Troy’s body to leave in reaction to that statement, and so he starts coughing violently as his head snaps up to look at Abed.

He looks pensive, but not angry or sad.

“I guess that’s not entirely right. She asked if I knew you were in love with me. I said I didn’t, which was true. I don’t have a ‘no lies’ pact with her, but context told me truth was required. She then asked me if I had ever suspected you were in love with me, to which I also said no, but that that was because I thought you were straight.

“She then asked if I was in love with her, which made my honesty pledge a bit harder, but I still answered honestly, which is that I do like her but I’m not in love with her. That made her angry. She then asked if I was in love with you, to which I said no –” Troy could feel his heart clench again “– but then I realized that was a lie as well.

“So I said that the Abed from before Troy left was in love with him, but the Abed from after Troy left wasn’t because that would be too painful. That didn’t convince her that I wasn’t in love with you, though, so she said this wasn’t working and broke up with me.”

“I’m sorry, Abed”, Troy says, because that is usually hat people say when relationships end. There is static in his brain, stuck on ‘the Abed from before Troy left was in love with him’.

Abed still doesn’t look sad, just pensive, and shrugs. “I ran the simulation for Abed/Rachel and it worked, but Abed never fell in love with her. I guess I convinced myself that was fine as long as she was happy, but I can understand why she didn’t feel that way. I just think that she was hurt by what you said and I don’t like that I hurt her more by not being in love with her.”

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Troy blurts out, ashamed. “Of course she would be here as your girlfriend – or like, ex-girlfriend now I guess – sorry – and like, she can keep her shoes wherever she wants and her coat was, like, fine –”

Abed cocks his head to the left. “I didn’t quite like the color either. Still, you weren’t very nice about it.”

Troy shakes his head. “I was awful, and I’m really sorry, Abed. You must think that I’m a really entitled prick and that I didn’t learn anything on my trip, but I really did. I promise I did.”

Abed rights his head again and something flashes across his face too fast for Troy to read. “What did you learn? I never thought there was anything you needed to learn, although it did shake up the narrative profoundly.”

Troy takes a deep breath. “I was, like, desperately in love with you,” No need to hold back now. “and I figured that maybe if I took some time to be me without Abed, I would get over it and I’d be fine with being just friends again. And I learned that I’m pretty cool, and that people like me for me, and that I’m definitely gay. I learned how to sail and I actually speak some Spanish now. I know how to cook at least five dishes and I can hold a conversation with Levar Burton. And I learned that while I am fine living without you, I don’t think I want to.”

Troy looks at Abed, everything on the table now, and can see how Abed fights off the mask. “That’s nice to hear. The problem is, I’m Abed from after, and while I know that Abed from before is still there, I don’t know how to get back to him yet.”

Troy shrugs. “That’s fine. I just really need you to be my best friend again.”

Abed narrows his eyes a bit, purses his mouth in the way Troy knows means Abed is confused. “I was always your best friend.”

And for the first time since Troy got back, they do their handshake, and Troy thinks they will be fine.

(And Rachel does not come back that night, and Abed sleeps in the blanket fort with Troy, and they wake up hugging, and Troy decides he won’t move out after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this wasn't terrible. I tried not to turn Rachel into a 'bad person', it's just Troy is really jealous. I hope it didn't come off as if I somehow hate Rachel.
> 
> I will probably will write a second part to this where they actually get together.


End file.
